Saturday, June 11, 2011

Mike Bara has a wet dream too

        So, OK—maybe there was a little doubt that Hoagland endorsed George Noory's "oceans and oceans" howler, but Mike Bara leaves us in no doubt about his failure to comprehend the melt inclusion study. It's in gray and white, in his blog for this week:

"[T]he Moon contains as much water as the Earth"

...and a little later...

"The Moon’s internal composition is exactly the same as Earth’s"

        ...both of which statements might be described as balderdash, poppycock, or codswallop, take your pick.

        Bara extends his already laughable misunderstanding to the utterly hilarious point of claiming that this study supports Tom Van Flandern's solar fission hypothesis, according to which the Sun formed first then flung the planets off into orbit, as opposed to the story which is confirmed by thousands of observations—a shrinking and fragmenting proto-planetary disk, most of which slowly accreted into planets.

        IF what Mike wrote were true—that "the Moon contains as much water as the Earth"—it would indeed be a stunner, but not because it would support solar fission. It would be unexplainable because all the water should have boiled away during the WHAM-O that broke the proto-moon out of the Pacific basin.

        Of course, it is emphatically NOT the case that there are subterranean oceans on the Moon. May I explain one more time for the benefit of the slower members of the class (that's you, Hoagland & Bara):

MICROSCOPIC INCLUSIONS IN LUNAR MAGMA CONTAIN WATER THAT WAS SEALED IN, AND PREVENTED FROM EVAPORATING DURING THE BIG WHAMMY. THE WATER CONCENTRATION IS LIKE THAT IN EARTH'S UPPER MANTLE -- 1000 TIMES LESS THAN TYPICAL POTTING SOIL.

SEE THAT WORD MICROSCOPIC?? IT MEANS THAT ALTHOUGH THE CONCENTRATION CAN BE MEASURED (WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY, I MIGHT ADD) WE STILL HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE TOTAL QUANTITY OF WATER IS. The LARGEST of these inclusions is 30 microns across—about half the thickness of a human hair.

        Writing that the Moon’s internal composition is exactly the same as Earth’s is like taking a sample of the Sahara Desert from a cup of mint tea on a cafĂ© table in Timbuktu.

        Minor point — Bara writes that 615 to 1,410 ppm is "about 100 times higher than previous studies of lunar magma had suggested." It's actually more like ten or twenty times.

Double strike

        I have nothing against Tom Van Flandern. He had an inventive mind, and at least (unlike Hoagland & Bara) his eccentric ideas had some connection to actual observation. He also had a Ph.D. in astronomy, whereas Hoagland & Bara are entirely untrained in the subject. However, as attentive readers of this blog already know, the other piece of astronomy news that turned up last month was a severe setback to Van Flandern's picture of the evolution of Mars by massive bombardment.

        Bara ends his blog scoring as follows: Van Flandern 1, Mainstream NASA types 0. The true score is Van Flandern 0, Modern science 2. Hoagland & Bara aren't even in the game.